After the deaths of so many people, survivors found themselves much more well off – leading to a boom in beer drinking

We had a health kick

Not only did later plague doctors wear beaks – they were quacks in the other sense of the word too.

These “doctors” were often untrained and inexperienced, and many ended up dying of the disease themselves after being exposed to the infected.

Simply put: physicians failed to stop the spread of the plague with their wacky techniques – like using leeches or frogs to cure boils – and people demanded better.

Autopsies, scientific procedures and modern medicine emerged in the decades after, as survivors focused their efforts on improving our knowledge of disease… although it would take centuries of study to truly understand it.